Hello everybody,
Sorry for the delay in filling in the details, I got back a few days ago but either our internet connection was out of order (which happens fairly often where we live) or our computer is getting "tired".
Thank you all so much for the congratulations and the nice words.
We were a group of five hunters and two cameramen on this trip (four of whom are experienced big game guides from the east), and had planned on hunting separately in two groups. We were accompanied by two Alaskan guides on the first half of the trip and an extra one on the second half.
Most of the guys primary species was Alaskan moose, mine was brown bear. All but one of us had both tags.
During the first half of our hunt things were looking pretty bleak... for the sake of keeping things in a positive mood, suffice to say that another in our group with a big heart, a satellite telephone, and the means, personally hired the bush plane company to move us.
At the new spot, hunting consisted of glassing the shoreline of a large bay of a river (that looked like a lake) from a rubber raft. We spotted the occasional black bear and then finally... a brown one.
The wind was marginal but we had to take the chance to get to the shore undetected, pull the raft up out of sight and then work our way closer to the bear. Another problem was finding a place where the guide and the cameraman could hide and where I could position myself close enough to the bear's travel route to be able to get a shot. It's not easy to hide three people, all with three different missions!
We didn't have much time to shop around for a spot so we setup at the first place that had a wider shoreline. It was pretty open though and the ground was littered with driftwood and dry sticks. That made it very difficult not only to get a solid foot position but also to change my stance direction smoothly and quietly to adjust to the bear's location when necessary.
The bear had been traveling faster than we expected since he appeared almost immediately upon taking our places.
Coincidently, the bear decided to spend some time and look for salmon at the exact strategic spot we chose (wider shoreline, shallower for fishing).
After picking up a weak fish in the water the bear walked into the bush behind us where I couldn't see it at all. Remember that the wind was marginal... and now where he went, even more marginal, LOL, if you know what I mean. I could only hope.
It spent about ten minutes in the bush the first time, repeating that another couple of times - I was too focused to count. It actually swam out one time and when it went back in the bush to eat, this time I could see brown fur moving around.
Each time the bear came out I had to be ready to shoot in the event I was offered a shot. When the bear was to my extreme right or left and I couldn't turn my torso any more, then I had to lift and reposition my feet quietly which was extremely difficult because of the ground clutter I mentioned previously. I studied body language and watched eyes to know when to move.
Finally, the bear decided to move on but chose a path directly towards me. I was almost standing in the wide open but my light grey wool camo top was strangely, but thankfully, pretty well the same color as the skinny sticks around me and the driftwood clutter.
Coming straight on I had no shot but at about seven or eight yards the bear turned, maybe thinking that I was just a big chunk of clutter it had to go around. I had been standing dead still at 1/3 draw all that time. I hadn't been able to get my rear foot in a good solid position so it was kind of bent up behind me, but I practice shooting in awkward stances so that wasn't a problem.
I came to full draw when I thought I could and then held it - I didn't want one of those skinny sticks to deflect my arrow and figured I had about a five or six foot shooting window when it crossed in front of me. It was moving pretty fast again and I had no space or time to spare.
I had remained undetected to this point and my goal had been to also launch an arrow undetected in a quartering away position.
The entire sight picture seemed to light up in my head and then a bit of fletching miraculously appeared exactly where I wanted.
With lightening reflexes the bear snapped at the cedar arrow and exploded off.
When I turned to look at the guide and the cameraman they were both smiling ear to ear.
We waited about twenty minutes or more and then found it piled up about 50 yards away. I might have been seeing things in slow motion (again) because the arrow had exited.
As a side note: Although I do have my left hand on the bear's back, the camera angle does not show that. Unfortunately, the bear still does look bigger in the picture than in real life (I don't like those pictures either but that is what they took). However, it is still one of the clearest and most complete pictures of those I have so far.
The bear squares about 8 1/2' but we couldn't measure front paw to front paw because I bag skinned it from the mid chest area up.
Topic: Ken Taylor made it! update! story and pics! (Read 2443 times)
